Camtasia Studio
is an excellent
starting point
for any would be screencasters, and for many people an excellent
endpoint too.
Out of all of the tools available to an
enthusiastic and willing screencaster, Camtasia Studio covers all the
basics and makes it easy for beginners.
Professional screencasting is
still, at
the
moment, a
relatively small field, and you can probably count the number of people
making a living from screencasts on one hand. Or maybe a couple at most.
Whether for putting together video software demonstrations,
learning
materials or information products, Camtasia Studio can come in very handy.
Camtasia Studio 5 Popularizing The Format
The soon to be released Camtasia Studio 5
is likely to continue in popularizing the format, just as Techsmith’s
Jing Project
seems to have made an impact in the blogosphere.
What the Jing Project
has done for newcomers to screencasting, Camtasia does for those
looking to put together a more professional screencast, packing in an
impressive feature set.
The latest version has some excellent features, and while they
won’t be convincing me to leave my Final Cut Pro and iShowU workflow, I think that I
will probably be tempted into checking what’s on offer.
Amit Argarwal has put togther a nice teaser
review over at Digital Inspiration, and the Techsmith people
have been unloosing sneak peek screencasts over the last week or so.
New Features Available
Among the features that are
likely to appeal to the would-be screencaster are:
- New transitions and call outs
- Screencast.com
integration for easy publishing and sharing - A “snap-to-app” feature which helps
you to instantly resize application windows to standard or custom video
dimensions - A killer feature called Smart Focus,
which will let you resize your screencast right down to Apple iPod
proportions, and will automatically zoom and pan to maintain visibility
throughout. This one is well worth seeing in action.
For me, the last feature is enough to warrant picking up a
copy, at
least if the feature works as well as it does in the screencast
demo.
Conclusions
I
spend a fair amount of time manually panning and zooming in FCPS2, so
it would be nice to use Camtasia Studio to automate that part of my
screencasting work flow for me. Should it come out on the mac, I might
just indulge.
Where Camtasia Studio falls short for me, consistently, is in its
audio and
editing capabilities, so it certainly won’t be taking the
place of
Final Cut for me.
Nevertheless, for getting out a fast, professional
looking screencast with ease, and its horde of features, I think that
this is likely to be the most popular version of the tool yet.
Professional screencasters beware,
the market is about to get a fresh influx of newcomers!
Originally written by Michael Pick, a professional screencaster, web video maker and blogger. Some Rights Reserved. Some Rights Reserved
